U.S. Congressman Chris Smith Takes War on Women Global

03.23.11 - (PRESS RELEASE) The Center for Reproductive
Rights (CRR) and Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) today condemned
U.S. Representative Chris Smith’s (R-NJ) trip to Kenya on Monday, where he
attacked the country’s new constitution and opened a new front in the
international offensive of his war on women.

Smith spoke under the guise of “human rights” at the Kenya
Christian Professionals Forum. He condemned the new Kenyan constitution’s
decriminalization of abortion in emergency situations or to protect the life or
health of the pregnant woman, telling audience members that “we need a world
that is free of abortion.”

While Smith spoke graphically about abortion, he made no
mention of the 2,600 Kenyan women who die annually from unsafe abortion, nor
the 21,000 additional women hospitalized each year as a result of complications
resulting from unsafe abortions. He also neglected the fact that more than
one-third of maternal deaths in Kenya are the result of unsafe abortion.

“Kenya addressed the devastating effect of illegal abortion
in a democratic constitutional reform process,” said Nancy Northup, president
of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “But Congressman Smith evidently
traveled across the globe in an attempt to roll back the clock on these
changes, disregarding clear evidence that criminalizing abortion merely makes
it less safe, increasing the risk to women’s lives and health.”

In May of last year, Rep. Smith argued in a letter to the
State Department’s Inspector General that the U.S. ambassador to Kenya should
not be permitted to discuss Kenya’s abortion law—yet on Monday, Rep. Smith
viciously attacked Kenya’s modest efforts to permit abortions where the life or
health of the mother is at risk, or in an emergency situation.

“It’s the hypocrisy that is so repugnant,” said
Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).
“Rep. Smith promotes himself as a defender of human rights while trampling the
rights of women and putting them directly in harm’s way—and this smacks of a
desire to impose abroad what he cannot accomplish at home.”